I find it odd the most dangerous teams OUTSIDE the one seed line (Maryland, UCLA, Stanford, Texas, Washington) were all avoided by South Carolina. I'll leave off Miss State who couldn't be in their region.

That Stockton regional was the SOFTEST regional I have ever seen. Miami and Marquette as the 4 and 5? Ha! Oregon State can't score and doesn't have enough athleticism. And Florida State peaked months ago. Someone on Selcom really wanted to make sure South Carolina made it. Perhaps the Associate Comish of the SEC on the Selcom? Hmmmm....

So now you have the 3 best teams teams in the country (UConn, Baylor, Maryland) on one half. Notre Dame and South Carolina possibly fatally wounded due to unfortunate injuries. And if they lose some real big whatevers in the Final 4 in their place with an anti climatic title game.

I think the more widely bally-hooed elements of the bracket were exposed by play. Most of the questionable at-large teams were bounced by large margins in the first round (and the one that wasn't, because they were playing another dubious at-large, got smacked around like a redheaded stepchild in the second). Overseeded Marquette got knocked out in the first round; underseeded DePaul laid the wood to UNI. Underseeded Syracuse whomped Iowa State; overseeded Miami needed help to get out of the first round and couldn't make it out of the second on their own home court. Overseeded Kentucky squeaked out of the first round and lost big at home; underseeded Oregon is going to the Sweet Sixteen.

I'm not going to assume conspiracy theories when plain old incompetence and ignorance explain just as much.

The top-4 seeds went the exact order of the S-Curve, except the #4 seeds had to be shifted a bit to avoid being in the same conference. I know this because I predicted the exact placement of every Top-4 seed based on my rankings, except I got UCLA & Washington mixed up because I thought Washington might've been a high 4-ssed and UCLA the lowest 3-seed, and not the other way around.

The committee wasn't going to put a team with only 1 top 25 win, the only one being against #4-ssed Louisvlle (and 0-1 against Ohio St), Maryland, ahead of teams that proved they can consistently beat top teams all year long, (with having only a minimal amount of losses), and there were 8 of those said teams, so that's how Maryland became a #3 seed. If Maryland really is a Top 5 team like people assume they are, they should've played top teams, besides just UConn, non-conference, instead of counting on the Big Ten helping them out.

Miami didn't have any bad/not good losses, and they beat Ohio St non-conference, beat Florida St in the ACC Tournament, and barely lost to Duke in the semi-finals, so that's how they got the last #4 seed. There was not much difference between the last #4 seed and #8 seed, so other teams only needed to have done just slightly more to gotten it.

Baylor would've been the #3 overall seed if they beat West Virginia in the Big 12 Championship. I wonder if South Carolina would've still been the #3 overall seed if it was revealed Coates would be out for the entire tournament before the selection?

I think the more widely bally-hooed elements of the bracket were exposed by play. Most of the questionable at-large teams were bounced by large margins in the first round (and the one that wasn't, because they were playing another dubious at-large, got smacked around like a redheaded stepchild in the second). Overseeded Marquette got knocked out in the first round; underseeded DePaul laid the wood to UNI. Underseeded Syracuse whomped Iowa State; overseeded Miami needed help to get out of the first round and couldn't make it out of the second on their own home court. Overseeded Kentucky squeaked out of the first round and lost big at home; underseeded Oregon is going to the Sweet Sixteen.

I'm not going to assume conspiracy theories when plain old incompetence and ignorance explain just as much.

Going by how the teams have been seeded/selected in the past few years I have started following, everything was consistent and not-surprsing to me, except I thought DePaul would be higher than a 7-seed (then again, Marquette got their #5-seed in part by beating them thrice).
I guess Syracuse had to play at UConn because Syracuse is so much closer to UConn than all the other 8-seeds and it would be too much money/inconvience to send them elsewhere on a plane to avoid a rematch from last-year, so I'm not a big fan of that though.

I do confess to being bummed that the committee's 13th-ranked (UCLA) team got stuck in the Bridgeport 4-seed slot that's presumably earmarked for the nation's 16th-ranked team... aka, the worst 4-seed. I defy anyone who watched either of this weekend's games in Westwood to claim that UCLA is the worst 4-seed in this tournament. That said, I recognize that UCLA's placement in the Bridgeport regional is not actually a committee eff-up. It's just a function of the committee's rule about separating conference teams... in this case, Pac-12 teams. UCLA just happened to be the Pac-12 team which-- for the second consecutive year-- drew the short straw with "Bridgeport" etched on the side.

The committee wasn't going to put a team with only 1 top 25 win, the only one being against #4-ssed Louisvlle (and 0-1 against Ohio St), Maryland, ahead of teams that proved they can consistently beat top teams all year long, (with having only a minimal amount of losses), and there were 8 of those said teams, so that's how Maryland became a #3 seed. If Maryland really is a Top 5 team like people assume they are, they should've played top teams, besides just UConn, non-conference, instead of counting on the Big Ten helping them out.

Your argument rests on the validity of the RPI. Except for that one measure Maryland was a 1 or 2 seed in both the Massey and Sagarin ratings. The reason is that those other algorithms consider the game stats while the RPI values a 2 point 51-48 win equally with a 85-55 blowout.

While I agree that Maryland needed to play more top OOC teams the same could be said for Miss St that played a barren OOC schedule and earned a high RPI on the SEC schedule. And we have all seen now for a number of years how the SEC has done as a conference in the tournament. Many get in but most are one win ponies. If ever there was clear evidence of the bankruptcy of the RPI system it's the SEC.

As an outsider my speculation is that back when the tournament was expanded to 64 the deal was that more small conference champions would get automatic berths and that the P5 conferences would get the at-large slots and thereby justify their multi-million dollar budgets to their AD's.

It's time for the women's side to end their marriage to the RPI and start using some of the newer algorithms. With all their talk about "student athletes" wcbb is also an entertainment business and no one wants to watch teams that rely on bigger stronger players to win but who struggle to put 50 points on the scoreboard.

The committee wasn't going to put a team with only 1 top 25 win, the only one being against #4-ssed Louisvlle (and 0-1 against Ohio St), Maryland, ahead of teams that proved they can consistently beat top teams all year long, (with having only a minimal amount of losses), and there were 8 of those said teams, so that's how Maryland became a #3 seed. If Maryland really is a Top 5 team like people assume they are, they should've played top teams, besides just UConn, non-conference, instead of counting on the Big Ten helping them out.

Your argument rests on the validity of the RPI. Except for that one measure Maryland was a 1 or 2 seed in both the Massey and Sagarin ratings. The reason is that those other algorithms consider the game stats while the RPI values a 2 point 51-48 win equally with a 85-55 blowout.

While I agree that Maryland needed to play more top OOC teams the same could be said for Miss St that played a barren OOC schedule and earned a high RPI on the SEC schedule. And we have all seen now for a number of years how the SEC has done as a conference in the tournament. Many get in but most are one win ponies. If ever there was clear evidence of the bankruptcy of the RPI system it's the SEC.

As an outsider my speculation is that back when the tournament was expanded to 64 the deal was that more small conference champions would get automatic berths and that the P5 conferences would get the at-large slots and thereby justify their multi-million dollar budgets to their AD's.

It's time for the women's side to end their marriage to the RPI and start using some of the newer algorithms. With all their talk about "student athletes" wcbb is also an entertainment business and no one wants to watch teams that rely on bigger stronger players to win but who struggle to put 50 points on the scoreboard.

I know. The committee clearly seems to ranks teams based on RPI and their wins/losses against teams with certains RPIs. The men's side must do that, or at least to some extent, too because some teams appeared to be seeded way too high or way too low compared how good they actually were during the season.

Maryland is not the third best team in the country. They lost to the only two good teams they played.

It's really hard to make such a definitive statement given their schedule. It's a crap shoot but I think Massey does a pretty good job so I think third is reasonable.

Frese explained why she played such a crappy schedule — it is because she had so many freshmen she wanted to ease them into the season. I think she could've put together a little more challenging schedule and still accomplish that goal but that's nitpicking. I'm fine with her rationale, and makes a lot of sense. What I'm not fine with is the decision to do something that's best for your team and then complaining about the seeding. You don't get to have it both ways. You can play a schedule that makes sense given an extremely young team and pay the price that your choices won't be applauded by the selection committee, or you can play a very tough schedule which will set you up well in the eyes of the selection committee but maybe you'll stumble in the beginning of the season and not grow as much as you would hoped. Both options are rational choices, but you don't get to have both. You don't get to play a cupcake schedule and get rewarded for it by the selection committee.

The cupcake schedule is really nothing new for Maryland. They've done the same thing year after year. They generally get away with it because the rest of the B1G give them somewhat of a lift. This year that didn't happen. Hence Brenda's surprise.

Also I agree with Linkster about the SEC. They are continuously over-rated in terms of RPI and it somehow becomes self-feeding. That they got 8 teams in and the B1G only 2 was ridiculous even though the B1G clearly was down.

Even though the bubble teams performed pretty much as expected, I'm not sure we could have agreed on their replacements. I kept thinking 'this team doesn't belong here' but then couldn't figure out who did....other than I expected Michigan to get in.

_________________“Try to be a rainbow in someone's cloud.”
― Maya Angelou

Year after year the SEC underperforms and yet the selection committee continues to reward them. I keep thinking that going to wake up but it hasn't happened yet. I've defended the selection committee in the past but I'm starting to wonder if I'm giving them too much credit.

The cupcake schedule is really nothing new for Maryland. They've done the same thing year after year. They generally get away with it because the rest of the B1G give them somewhat of a lift. This year that didn't happen. Hence Brenda's surprise.

Also I agree with Linkster about the SEC. They are continuously over-rated in terms of RPI and it somehow becomes self-feeding. That they got 8 teams in and the B1G only 2 was ridiculous even though the B1G clearly was down.

Even though the bubble teams performed pretty much as expected, I'm not sure we could have agreed on their replacements. I kept thinking 'this team doesn't belong here' but then couldn't figure out who did....other than I expected Michigan to get in.

Michigan didn't have any good wins and they got blown out by UCLA, who lost to Cal, and Mich St, who got blown out by Oregon....

Even if you think the SEC is over-rated by RPI (I agree that they shouldn't have gotten 8 teams in; Auburn didn't deserve it over UVA), the Pac-12s RPI was so much higher than the SECs, which in turn was so much higher than the Big 10, that it doesn't make sense to leave out a Cal on the bubble in favor of Michigan.

The cupcake schedule is really nothing new for Maryland. They've done the same thing year after year. They generally get away with it because the rest of the B1G give them somewhat of a lift. This year that didn't happen. Hence Brenda's surprise.

Also I agree with Linkster about the SEC. They are continuously over-rated in terms of RPI and it somehow becomes self-feeding. That they got 8 teams in and the B1G only 2 was ridiculous even though the B1G clearly was down.

Even though the bubble teams performed pretty much as expected, I'm not sure we could have agreed on their replacements. I kept thinking 'this team doesn't belong here' but then couldn't figure out who did....other than I expected Michigan to get in.

Michigan didn't have any good wins and they got blown out by UCLA, who lost to Cal, and Mich St, who got blown out by Oregon....

Even if you think the SEC is over-rated by RPI (I agree that they shouldn't have gotten 8 teams in; Auburn didn't deserve it over UVA), the Pac-12s RPI was so much higher than the SECs, which in turn was so much higher than the Big 10, that it doesn't make sense to leave out a Cal on the bubble in favor of Michigan.

The main problem with the SEC is they have several good teams, but a lot of their "good" teams are so inconsistent, so, for example, beating Tennessee on a day they decide not to be any good adds a big win to your resume which in turn either boosts your seed or helps get you into the tournmanet.